


Prayers of the Young

by Sticky_Vicky



Category: For Honor (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:13:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22565314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sticky_Vicky/pseuds/Sticky_Vicky
Summary: Saint Lillian finds hope in the form of a young soldier
Kudos: 10





	Prayers of the Young

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to my best friend Jack for helping me with editing this story. Without him, it would have been much rougher. 
> 
> Critiques are welcome!

“Saint Lillian?” A voice from the darkness calls to the Prior. Lillian looks up from her silent meditation to the open flat of the tent. With the flickering candlelight of her altair, she can see the outline of someone standing in the shadows. The stranger has a small frame to them, they’re slumping their shoulders and keeping their head low. Nervous hands fidget about their body, dashing behind the strangers back, then freezing to their sides, then cradling one another. They remind Lillian of her own daughter’s hands, how they would restlessly dart about when Lillian caught her teasing the neighbors’ animals. They’re the hands of someone who is unsure of their actions like they’re guilty of a crime only they know of. The Prior wonders if the stranger knows she can see them. 

“What do you need of me, my child?” Lillian asks, brushing her hand past the dagger she keeps at her waistband. This wouldn't be the first time those damnable Samurai sent an assassin after her. Those cowards slinking through the shadows like slavering dogs, wanting her blood. Lillian shifts her weight to her toes, muscles tensing like springs, waiting to leap up at the first sign of danger. 

When Lillian sees the shadow step into the candlelight, she relaxes. The stranger is not but a young girl, a blond and lithe thing, someone who should be far away from a battlefield like this. Her dovish blue eyes stare at the Prior with an overflowing intensity, a look all too familiar to Lillian. Lillian surmises the poor waif, wearing the reddish-orange armor of the invading knightly forces, can’t be older than seventeen at most. The stranger’s small hands dart to her face to brush a hanging strand of hair back into place behind her ear. Those nervous hands almost slam themselves back to her sides. She swallows hard, the jaw muscles seeming to accentuate the round youngness in her face. Lillian can’t help but wonder why. Why someone this young? What happened to this lost soul to have her end up here, in these swamps of death and rot. 

“Forgive me for bothering you at such an hour, my lady, but it's a matter of utmost importance to me. And please forgive my forwardness, but when you were giving blessings to us in the morning, I was out with the patrol company. I wasn’t able to get blessed yet, and with the battle coming over the horizon… You talk to God, I don’t want him to forget me before we go forward tomorrow.”

Lillian feels a tinge of sadness in her heart. If God was still with her, she wouldn’t have been stuck here watching her friends die to the Samurai. Long lines of young men and women have charged the damned temple over and over again, and each time they are sent bleeding back into the mists of the Myre. The temple must be important to someone, contain some prize that justifies all the death and killing. An object to end this damnable war, or a person of high standing to reveal some secret way to end this conflict. Why would they let so many die trying to open those jade-colored gates if it held nothing of such value? 

Nobody would tell her something that important, even if an object so wonderful existed. Her only job is to bless the walking corpses, to inspire them to battle so they’re ready to die in the name of whatever lord commanded it. She’s forced to watch people she promised God would protect die to Samurai steel, torn apart by blades or impaled by arrows. They would beg god to save them, crying out in agony as they died. Sometimes they begged her too.

She wipes her gloved hand across her face, concentrating on the biting cold of the metal freezing that bloody path of thoughts. The young girl stares at Lillian, those wide blue eyes looking like a dam about to burst, water pooling in the corners of each eye. The young girl needs this, Lillian knows. 

“Of course my child. Come, kneel before me and pray. I will ask the Lord to protect you.” Lillian stands to her feet, her armor and tunic rustling and clinking around her. She wishes she could take off her armor, relax in something less heavy, but in these lands it was too dangerous to doth something that could save your life against a hidden archer, or a blade in the night. To have such a luxury, one would need a friend to watch their back, to dissuade any sort of ambushes with the protection of numbers. Lillian can’t stand having people around her anymore. She doesn’t want to recognize them as their bodies cooled on the ground. 

“What is your name?” Lillian asks, studying the young waif’s face.

“I’m named Maria.” the girl says, kneeling before the Prior.

“No surname?”

“I am but a simple soldier.”

“No husband? Family?”

“I’m sorry m’lady, I am but a peasant girl. I was never married. I only have Maria for God and you.”

Lillian said nothing. Maria looked up at her, the nervousness and tears gone, washed away by admiration and hope. She looks at the Prior with different eyes, calm eyes. It was a complete change from the scared little girl that first entered Lillian's tent just a few moments before. The way she looks at Lillian reminded the Prior of her own daughter, staring at her with a hopeful glint in her eyes. Those eyes brought back memories of love and loss. Of having to bury her daughter in a village burnt by war.

“Bow your head and pray,” Lillian says, placing her armored hand upon Maria’s shoulders. The girl obeys, both hands clasping each other and hovering in front of her mouth. 

“Lord our God, bless your child with your holy protection” Lillian lifts her left hand above Maria’s head, slashing a cross in the air. “Look after her tomorrow, look on her with love and grace so she may survive whatever your enemies throw at her mortal body. And if she died that day, please cradle her as you take her to holy paradise. In the Lord's name, amen.”

“Amen.” Maria says, looking up at Lillian. Those sea-blue eyes, once overflowing with fear crashing upon Lillian, are replaced with calm. A stillness that comes from inner peace, acceptance of the future to come. 

“Arise, my child, God is looking at you now.” 

Maria grabs at Lillian’s arms, pulling the Prior down. Lillian's free hand shoots towards her dagger, the reactionary urge of survival overtaking almost all of her senses. Maria uses Lillian to get to her feet, but instead of attacking the Prior, she wraps her arms around Lillian's torso. 

“Thank you, dear Prior” Maria says, squeezing Lillian in a tight embrace. The Prior’s heart pounded, muscles tensed and ready for action. Her gloved hand was wrapped around the dagger, a moment longer and it would have been inside of Maria’s gut. Confusion closes around Lillian like a water-heavy rag, she was drowning in it.

It was a warm hug, even if the layers of armor prevented any actual warmth from being felt. Maria squeezed herself into Lillian, head resting on the Prior’s shoulder and pushing herself into the nape of the neck. Lillian can feel the warmth of the girls’ face, the aliveness of it. The heat actually surprised the old veteran of the battlefield, it brought back memories that she had hidden away to let die. Memories of starlit nights holding her lover close, fireside celebrations with her friends, hands holding hands, riverside washing with her daughter. So many searing warm thoughts. So many blindingly warm emotions. 

Neither of the women noticed it, but the Prior’s arm lifts for a moment before dropping back down. An involuntary movement, like when the hand pulls away after a cut on the finger. It was a twitch of a soul deprived of warmth. Deprived of something so forgettably basic to the living body that it went unnoticed. Deep inside, through layers of denial and self-hate, the Prior wants more of this. Of a simple love. She feels the wasteland of her barren heart rumble. The hard stone she has crafted over her soul began to feel pressured, the force of this simple action cracking down on its cold surface, splintering the rock. Lillian closes her eyes. She could feel the heat behind them, the boiling river threatening to burst. Each moment that rock in her soul splintered and shook, splintered and shook, splintered and…

Maria lets the Prior go. The warmth replaced with the cool air of the Myre. The pressure on her soul disappears as quickly as it had appeared, and it's instead replaced with anger. 

“I let her get too close” Lillian scolds herself. “I know how this ends.” But even with that anger, there was hope inside. It's as small as a coin, and everything else inside of her laughed at it, saying how naive it was to have such a thing. But Lillian held onto it. She needed it like someone needs water. She would hold onto it as if it was the holiest object.

“Thank you, Saint Lillian” Maria said, moving with an energetic vigor that made her previous nervous self seem like a bad joke. Those eyes had a simple joy in them, glowing with the warmth of youngness. A smile was on full display like she knew everything was going to be okay, and tomorrow would pass just like any other day. And without another word, Maria disappears into the blackness of the night. 

Lillian stands there, staring into the darkness of the night. A feeling in her mind made her want to go searching for the girl, to send her away from this place of death, this nightmare of warfare. Send her running back to the Ashfield Forests where maybe she could start a new, better life. She knows she can’t do that. It would be a death sentence for them both, summarily hung for desertion, or killed on the road back home by the roving bands of Samurai guerrilla fighters. 

Lillian kneels back down, praying to God to protect the poor thing, her soul shouting up into the heavens. She hopes God would grant this last request to a soul damned to hell. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“AD PROFUNDIS!”

The massive weight of the Samurai threatens to crush her as she lifts him over herself using her shield. The demon had tried to grab her, wanting to crush her spine against his shoulder. But she used that forward momentum against him, having him flip over her shield. Lillian can feel the strain in her leg muscles as she heaves the fat Samurai over her head, making him fall over onto his back behind her. She can hear him groan, puffing out what little air was in his lungs. She spins on her heel, sword whistling through the air as it comes across his head, slashing a red mark through the top of his skull. 

The Shugoki twitches once then lies still. Blood pouring out the head like a stream. Lillian looks away from the corpse, collapsing to a knee and breathing in a lungful of burning swamp air. The fight for this strategic point under the massive old and gnarled tree had been brutal and bloody. Herself and two others, a Conqueror and a Lawbringer had charged into the point. Swords flashed, blood was set loose, and in the end, only she was the last to stand. The Conqueror is dead, drowned at the bottom of the lake, and the Lawbringer died with an Orochi’s blade in his throat. She never learned either of their names, but she whispers a prayer under her panting breath, wishing them farewell and rest in the afterlife.

She stands up on jelly legs, looking towards the pathway to the temple gates. Knights pushing against the Samurai shields, blades darting in like seabirds into the ocean, flying back into the open air with red splashes of life on their cold steel. It’s a meat grinder, screams, and cries of pain, roars of fury and grunts of effort, the clattering of shields on shields, the ringing pitch of blade against blade. 

She looks just a little further and higher. On the walls of the cliff, standing on an outcropping of a temple carved into the mountainside, she can see the Warden and a Kensei, circling around one another. Both of the warriors are tense, like beartraps waiting to spring. They stare at each other, daring the other to make the first move, waiting to react to the quick blade.

Lillian feels the pain in her body, the exhaustion that comes with fighting for one’s own life. That horrid acid-like burning. She stumbles forward, bringing her shield closer to her body, gripping her sword tighter in her hand. She can help with this push, the final march past those damnable green gates. And maybe if God is kind to her, she may finally go home. 

Footsteps from behind. Lillian spins, ducking behind her shield just as a naginata scrapes over the top of her shield. The wood splinters from the sudden attack and the momentum is transferred into Lillian, making her stumble backward. The blade retracts back, before darting to Lillian’s foot. She can't bring her shield to bear as the naginata blade slashes up and diagonally, cutting past her armor and drawing blood. 

Her body sends all the pain to her head, and Lillian gasps with the overwhelming feeling. The exhaustion from the last fight creeping back into her muscles. Lillian concentrates, tensing her muscles, trying to push the pain out of her thoughts. The naginata is much longer than her own blade, she needs to reclaim the distance between them or else she will die before the gates can be taken. She walks forward, keeping an eye on the Nobushi’s movements, waiting for the moment to close that gap. The Samurai walks backward, her hands gripping the naginata with cool confidence only an expert knows. 

Lillian see’s the footwork before the attack comes, the Samurai's right foot shifting under her body for balance. “Oshite maru!” the Nobushi yells, dropping her left leg and using the right as a central balance. The naginata comes flying in, the blade gleaming in the shadow of the tree. Lillian reacts quickly, catching it with her shield, throwing the blade to the side. The Samurai can't recover from the parry, nearly tripping over herself trying to regain her balance. The Prior raises her sword in a savage overhead strike, her blade flying down like a vengeful hawk. 

The strike is true, it cuts a savage line from shoulder to hip, a diagonal line of blood springing forth like water from a dam. The Nobushi tries to dodge away from the Priors sword, but Lillian anticipated this. Using the momentum from the overhead, she follows the Nobushi in her retreat, turning with her hips to crouch low and send the blade in a long sidelong slash. 

The connection is brutal, the blade cuts through the Samurais fabric and becomes lodged in the Nobushi’s side. The woman gasps in agony, dropping her own blade with the shock of such pain. The Samurai grabs Lillian's arm in a desperate, animalistic, attempt to dislodge the blade. 

Lillian bashes the Samurai with her shield, hitting the woman just where the nose would be. The mask shatters, revealing the bloodied face of the Nobushi that tried to kill the Prior. The Samurai stumbles back, clutching her face and falling to the floor. Lillian walks forward, blade poised to finish her assailant. She straddles the Samurai, aiming the blade towards her heart. The Nobushi stares at the Prior with true fear. 

Lillian feels a terrible stinging pain in her arm, then a force dragging her backward away from the Nobushi. The world flips over, she can feel herself being dragged along the ground. Lillian clambers to her feet, only to meet a foot in her chest that makes her stumble back. A Samurai with two farming sickles throws one of them into her shoulder. The blade finds the chink in her armor and cuts a painful stab into her flesh. The Samurai runs at her again, seeming to almost slide along the ground. Lillian anticipates another kick, and dodges to the side. 

At the last moment, the Shinobi kicks out Lillian's leg, making her trip and land face-first to the floor once again. She tries to spin around, but the weight of her shield under her makes that task nearly impossible. Just as she starts getting up, she feels the Samurai jump on her back, knocking the air out of her lungs and slamming her head against the shield. She feels the rough cold metal of chains wrap around her neck. They’re pulled taught, cutting Lillian off from her air supply. She tries to get her shield arm out from under her, but with both her bodyweight and the Shinobi’s its almost impossible. She tries to swing her short-sword at him, but she cannot get enough leverage to make her strikes true. Her lungs desperately try to suck in air, her face feels like its inches from a fire. The world bursts into stars. She drops her blade and grabs at the chain, using what remains of her strength to unbalance the Shinobi. It doesn't work, the leverage he has on her makes it impossible. The world slowly starts getting blacker and blacker. For her last desperate attempt, she darts for her dagger in her tunic and slashes wildly behind her. 

She feels connection, hears a scream, and air comes rushing back to her lungs. The Shinobi hops around on one leg, trying to pull the dagger out from him. But since his hands are wrapped in chains, he cannot grasp the daggers handle. Coughing and coughing, Lillian grabs her discarded sword and strikes the Shinobi's other leg. He falls over with a scream. She gets her arm free of her shield and crawls over to the fallen Samurai, grabbing one of the sickles as she does. With her free hand, she forces his head up to reveal his neck. He desperately claws at her hand, but the chains wrapped around them do not offer the grip he needs. She aligns the blade with the Shinobis neck, and slices it with his own weapon. 

He claws at his neck, writhing on the ground, but quickly dies. His eyes look shocked and surprised as his final gurgle comes. 

Lillian pants, watching the assassin die. He leaves the world quickly. Even if he tried to kill her, she sends his soul away with a prayer, asking God to help him find rest. She can hear the soft crunch of dirt as someone walks towards her from behind. She lifts her head up to see a Centurion coming behind her. 

“Prior, it seems we’ve finally won the gates! The enemy troops are trying to rally in the temple, let us push them out so we can finally leave this blasted place” he says, grabbing Lillian by her arm and dragging her to her feet. She sways, her body still straining from the assault laid upon it. The Centurion pats her shoulder and leaves as quickly as he came. She wants to get away from here, but her body refuses. Everything feels terribly heavy. The adrenaline has taken its course through her system and without it, she feels no strength in her body. She can barely even lift her sword and shield. 

She slips her arm out of the shield straps and sticks her sword into the dirt. They’re dragging her down, with the beating she took she doesn't have the strength to carry those items. Her body staggers forward, the weight of her armor threatening to pull her back down to the floor. Each lungful of this swamp air makes her feel sick, making her unable to truly catch her breath. Using the railing of the bridge, she drags herself along it, walking back to the rear lines. They could force out the remnants of the Samurai on their own. She needed to get back to camp. 

She passes by the rows and rows of corpses in the lane, bodies of her fellow Knights strewn about. The Samurai's dead are there as well, interwoven with the corpses of her armsmen. It’s like a quilt, patches of blue and red covering one another, strokes and splashes of darker reds, some skin tones. A horrible little art piece, that to another eye, might say something about the human condition. To Lillian, it’s just another reminder of the senselessness of it all. There was no hidden beauty to this violence. Every splash was an actual, real person. Every stroke of a sword was made to kill, never to create. To Lillian, only cruel fools could see something in this field of the dead.

“Lil...Lillian”

A soft, small voice calls from the bodies. Acidic adrenaline burns through her veins once more, reawakening sore muscles that scream for rest. Lillian turns, eyes wide and wild scanning through the sea of corpses.

“Saint… Lillian” Someone calls again. The voice is coming from under some bodies near the center of the massacre. Lillian surges forward, stepping on and over the resting dead. She finds the location of the voice, and begins tossing the dead Knights and Samurai that pile on it. When the Prior see’s Maria, she wishes she hadn't. 

The poor girl has been cut to ribbons. Her blonde hair stuck together in clumps of dried blood, her skin was pallid, almost white. She has a terrible gash across her stomach, and Lillian could see the girl’s intestines poking through the flesh. Something sliced her right eye, rendering it destroyed. 

“Lillian, please… Please pray with me.” Maria says, lifting a shaking hand towards the Prior. “Please don’t let God forget about me”

Lillian's body shakes, the adrenalin making her muscles quiver with anticipation of an attack. Lillian’s shoulders stoop, her face twisting into a shape of unbelieving pain. A maelstrom of buried emotions twirled her mind into dizzying spins, making her legs sway and nearly sending Lillian falling over. She can feel tears collecting at the corners of her eyes, thick and heavy, boiling hot tears that singe the skin as they fall to the floor. She can feel them roll down her face, shivering along her cheeks and falling to the ground to mix with the blood.

“Saint Lillian…” She coughs, bits of blood and flesh dribbling out of her mouth. “Please hold me. It hurts too much. Please hold me as God comes.”

Lillian drops to her knees, grabbing the girl’s hand with both of hers. She squeezes them as if somehow it’ll help the poor thing get better. 

“Please Lillian, don’t let him forget me” Maria’s single good working eye starts to glaze over, her hand losing its already weak grip on Lillian’s. 

“I don’t want to be here. I wish to go home”

Maria’s final breath comes in a long, pain-filled drag. The girl's hand goes limp inside of Lillian’s grip. The young woman, someone Lillian barely knew barley saw, was finally released from her agony. 

Alone again. Save for faint screams coming from the temple, everything is silent. The world froze, as if it was watching, waiting. It was smothering. It was shattering.

Everything bursts from Lillian in that moment, her ragged lungs pushing out painful agonizing sobs. She holds the girls’ hand, refusing to let her slip away, trying to hold onto something, anything. Rage and sadness whirl in her chest, collecting into a violent tornado before bursting into the grey sky above. It was the prayer of the lost, the first prayer that is spoken when the Gods have truly abandoned someone. When the soul realizes that only cruelty and hate can survive in this world. A horrible song of pain, each scream cutting a wound that can never heal. 

And the Prior sang long. She sang until she couldn't sing anymore.


End file.
